Reading is a right, not a privilege
First question: How did Chelsea Manning, from inside maximum security Fort Leavenworth military prison, manage to get out a tweet to her 58,420 followers?
(Frankly I would have thought she’d have more, followers that is, as a poster girl of purported militaryindustrial conspiracy.)
Internet and (pay) phone use is strictly monitored at the Kansas military prison. But as a former computer-jockey army intelligence analyst, doubtless Manning knows her way around clandestine tactics. Perhaps the communiqué she issued this week was merely relayed through her lawyer or friends with the various support groups who consider the ex-soldier a whistleblower hero.
Certainly the tweet appears legitimate, originating from Manning’s official Twitter account, @xychelsea.
There may be repercussions from that dispatch too, on the heels of punishment issued over Manning’s possession of contraband articles — unapproved reading material. That was the violation that resulted in the outcome Manning made public following her Tuesday disciplinary hearing: “I was found guilty of all four charges at today’s board; I am receiving 21 days of restrictions on recreation — no gym, library or outdoors.”
Accused also of “medicine misuse” after a July 9 cell search — a silly transgression, relating to a tube of toothpaste past its expiration date — Manning could have been bludgeoned with indefinite solitary confinement.
Upward of 100,000 signatures were affixed to a petition delivered to the U.S. army liaison in Congress, asking that the charges against Manning be dropped. This is important because infractions tallied while behind bars could affect a future parole process.
That future is far, far down the line. Manning is serving a 35-year-sentence for leaking 700,000 classified documents to Wiki-Leaks — documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts she accessed while serving as intelligence analyst in Baghdad. She was convicted two years ago under the Espionage Act. They threw the book at her.
At the time, Chelsea Manning was still Bradley Manning. She now self-identifies as female, though incarcerated at an all-male facility, which must be horrendous.
Manning was diagnosed with gender identity disorder while still in the army. In what was described as a first, the U.S. army this year approved hormone therapy in prison for Manning to transition to female — but not before she’d filed a suit. She’s also legally changed her name to Chelsea.
The legal merits of the “espionage” case against Manning won’t be regurgitated here, nor the vulnerability of whistleblowers. It’s indisputable, however, that Manning’s actions caused immense harm.
What’s shocking, in Manning’s most recent conflict with authorities, is the nature of those reading materials deemed prohibited: Books and magazines that would not raise an eyebrow anywhere other than inside prison walls. The magazines included Vanity Fair, the issue with transgender Caitlyn Jenner on its cover, read by millions.
The books: I Am Malala, the memoir of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for female education who was shot in the face and youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate; Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous, about the worldwide hacker network; Justice for Hedgehogs, by philosopher Ronald Dworkin, about moral convictions and the “unity of value;” The Whiskey Rebellion, about a radical 18th-century people’s movement; Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, which examines our mass surveillance society, via online information; America: A Narrative History; A Safe Girl to Love, 11 short stories featuring transgender females “stumbling through loss, sex, harassment and love”; and the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture.
Why all these books would be of interest to Manning is self-evident. There’s nothing seditious or warranting censorship, certainly no national security issue.
But correctional institutions make up their own rules and Leavenworth’s warden isn’t explaining the confiscations. An online version of the prison’s information handbook states that inmates “have the right to a wide range of reading materials . . . for educational purposes and your own enjoyment,” with unspecified restrictions.
While the general aim of restricting books is to filter out what’s considered “inappropriate” — or potentially inflammatory — a security risk, in the broadest definition — those restrictions are wide-ranging, highly subjective and often wildly ridiculous. A 2011 report by the Texas Civil Rights Project laid this out in black and white.
It found that 12,000 books had been banned, the offending menu so vast primarily because all it takes to get the hook is one single word in the text deemed objectionable. The list includes a multitude of classic literature, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and popular fiction. Among the no-go writers were works by William Shakespeare, Stephen King, Jack Kerouac, Gustave Flaubert, Sister Helen Prejean, Sojourner Truth, Kurt Vonnegut, George Orwell, even Jon Stewart and Jenna Bush, the former president’s daughter ( Ana’s Story: A Journey of Hope, non-fiction, about a 17-year-old girl born with HIV).
Leading reasons for censorship: criminal schemes, fighting techniques, deviant sexual behaviour, racial content, gambling, manufacturing of drugs/weapons and homosexuality. Top of the uh-uh list in Texas was, geez, Rand McNally, the map-makers, on the grounds that they could assist felons in plotting escape routes.
Legal thrillers by the likes of John Grisham were also taboo. Also nixed: The Color Purple, Tropic of Cancer, The Satanic Verses, Shakespeare’s Love Sonnets, Portnoy’s Complaint, The Medium Is the Message, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, Fried Green Tomatoes, Memoirs of a Geisha, Stephen King’s It, Dante’s Inferno, The Silence of the Lambs and Roger Kahn’s The Boys of Summer, a history of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Weirdly, publications that pass the sniff test include Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Klansman David Duke’s Jewish Supremacism: My Awakening to the Jewish Question, the antiSemitic “classic” Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Guns Illustrated.
Maybe you don’t give a damn about such cockamamie restrictions placed on inmates. Manning, the traitor, can rot in her prison cell, denied the prose of a Caitlyn Jenner celebrity profile or governmentissued audit on torture. But surely reading isn’t a privilege; it’s a right.
Let ’em read the Bible, no? Nothing insidious or incendiary there, by God. Rosie Di-Manno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.